


like stars in the sky

by apocalyvse



Category: Z-O-M-B-I-E-S (Disney Movies)
Genre: Gen, One Shot, One Shot Collection, Originally Posted on Tumblr, Tumblr Prompt, juuuuuust read them okay
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2020-04-16
Updated: 2020-08-24
Packaged: 2021-03-01 16:41:12
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 11
Words: 11,097
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/23680237
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/apocalyvse/pseuds/apocalyvse
Summary: we're seperate but we're together---a collection of prompt fills from my tumblr @zombiedadjokes
Relationships: Wyatt Lykensen/Addison Wells, Zed Necrodopoulus/Addison Wells
Comments: 15
Kudos: 28





	1. aftermath

**Author's Note:**

> prompt: challenging you to write something short. addison goes missing. zed is left to deal with the aftermath
> 
> from [keepswingin](https://keepswingin.tumblr.com/)

_Presumed dead_ , the police say. ****

_Lawsuit_ , her parents say. 

_Gone_ , his heart says, and then it shatters into a million different pieces, scattered across the floor like so much dust. 

The house is cold and empty and dark, like it has been for three weeks now. It has nothing to say at all, no comfort to offer him than the comforts that she had placed there, remnants of a ghost. The people outside have nothing to say either as they pass on the street, eyeing his house with a mistrust he’d fought so hard to win his way past. 

Stupid, really, to think a zombie could live in peace in a human community. That they wouldn’t find something to blame him for, the first chance they had. 

He ends up in the kitchen, flipping the lights on as he goes. This is the last place he remembers seeing her, laughing as she handed him another drink, her cheeks turning red, her hands soft and clumsy. The bottles are still on the counter, lined up in a row against the wall; there are too many, far too many. He can’t remember drinking them all, though he knows most of them were his. 

He can’t remember where the line of red stuck in the grout of the tiled floor came from either. Some spilt food, maybe, or residue from that rose-scented soap she liked so much. It’s all a blur - the before, and the after, everything he’s done in the past month. That night is the blurriest of all. He remembers drinking, and dancing, remembers kissing her somewhere in between, soft and sweet, his back pressed up against the kitchen wall. 

He remembers waking up alone on the back lawn, head aching and stomach churning, and Addison nowhere to be found. 

The lawn is dark now, the lights she’d strung around as a homage to Zombietown all turned off two weeks ago, when he couldn’t bear the sight of them anymore. He doesn’t want to see it, the lawn, or the oak tree in the corner, or the bed of freshly-turned earth. She’d been planting tulips there, at the back of the house. They haven’t sprouted, not even now, after three weeks of him watering them. He’s decided they never will. 

There’s a ring from the phone in the hall, loud and sharp and echoing through the house. He doesn’t answer it. It will be Bree, calling to make sure he hasn’t gone anywhere, while she tries to decide whose side she is on. Or it will be Eliza, asking him again if he remembers, if he knows what happened, where she went. Or maybe it will be her parents, calling to throw abuse at him again, to accuse him of all the things he never wanted to be. 

Maybe this time, it will be the Zombie Patrol, to inform him that they have figured out what happened. That they will be coming in the next hour, that this is the end. 

He sits down on the kitchen floor, stares at the red line of the tiles, and waits for the phone to stop ringing.


	2. patience

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> “Are you okay?” Wyatt asks as they walk home through the forest, dropping back to walk with her. The other wolves bound off at top speed, the older ones chasing the pups down the path and out into the wild beyond, quickly lost to the trees.
> 
> She freezes, her feet stuttering to a halt. Her fingers pick incessantly at the fur on her wrist, the bit of rabbit skin she’d crafted into a bracelet one cold winter when she was a pup. Wyatt waits patiently. He’s always patient, especially when he knows he can break her in under two minutes. It’s why she prefers Willa and her hot impatience out of the two; at least with Willa, she can sometimes keep a secret.
> 
> “Am I dumb?” she blurts out, not thirty seconds later, and then curses herself for being so quick to fold under pressure.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> [kokinu09](https://kokinu09.tumblr.com/) asked: Give me some Wynter angst. She doesn’t get enough attention.

“Hey!”

The voice comes from behind her while she’s watching Bonzo lift one of the human girls up into the air (she stands tall and proud, one foot in his hands, and for a brief moment Wynter feels the urge to try it herself, just to see how it feels). She turns to find Lacey and Stacey standing behind her, joined at the hip as always. Their eyes are hungry, like sharks looking for fish to swallow, and they are not fixed on the flyer.

But she’s being silly, thinking these girls she barely knows would be here to hurt her. It’s the wild getting in her head again, that’s what the others would say – nothing here is like the forest. Humans aren’t wolves.

“Hi,” she says, and fixes on her brightest smile, so that no doubt will flash across her face.

“You’re Wynter, right?” Lacey smiles back, one strand of her hair twisting and untwisting around her finger. “I was just talking to Stacey and like, your buns are _so_ cute.”

“Oh,” Wynter says and touches the white piece of her hair, tucked up in a ball atop her head like it is every day. “Thanks! My mum taught me how to do it when I was a pup. I could show you how if…you want…”

The cheerleaders share a look between them, all shifting eyes and grins that tug at their lips, barely concealed, and she trails off.

“Too much?” she asks, but their furrowed brows are nothing like Willa’s withering stare, or Wyatt’s wry acceptance of the things he cannot change. She withdraws anyway, hands held close to her chest like she’s not sure what else to do with them.

“So you’re joining cheer, huh?” Lacey asks instead, changing the subject before Wynter can make any more of a fool of herself.

“I think so,” Wynter replies, trying to be cautious with her words. “I don’t know much about it, but Addison says she can help me.”

“Oh, yeah, Addison _loves_ a project,” Lacey says, and smiles with all her teeth. If she had a set of fangs, she’d almost be intimidating.

“She’ll take anyone on the cheer team,” Stacey adds, and the girls share a laugh.

“Are you going to try being a flyer?” Lacey asks.

“Maybe?” Wynter wrings her hands, looking from one to the other nervously, trying to gauge if this was the correct answer or not. They look unimpressed – maybe for once, she isn’t giving _enough_. She takes a deep breath and presses on. “It would be so cool to be up in the air like that. It’d be like jumping out of the big tree into the river and-”

The girls share another look and her mouth snaps shut.

Lacey puts a sickly-sweet smile onto her face. “Well, good luck!” she says, and she sounds almost _too_ cheery. “Even if you don’t make the team, I’m sure you’ll do great.”

“Even if I…don’t make the team?” Wynter is almost afraid to ask.

“Oh, yeah.” Lacey waves a hand. “Cheer is really competitive, you know?”

“Yeah,” Stacey agrees, nodding along with her. “ _Super_ competitive. Especially this year. There probably won’t be spots for…slow learners…”

“ _Slow_ is probably the wrong way to put it,” Lacey puts in, before Wynter can even react. “She just means, new people probably won’t get on the team this year.” She smiles, but it seems fake and plastic. Wynter shakes herself.

“Um…thanks,” she says quietly, very unlike the tough werewolf she wants to be, and backs away slowly. “I’ll keep…working on it…”

“You’ll be great!” Lacey says one last time, and waves with just her fingers as Wynter turns away.

She tries to ignore the sound of giggling as she crosses the gym, running back to the other werewolves that had been brave enough to join cheer.

—

“Are you okay?” Wyatt asks as they walk home through the forest, dropping back to walk with her. The other wolves bound off at top speed, the older ones chasing the pups down the path and out into the wild beyond, quickly lost to the trees.

Wyatt stays. She’s not sure if he’s here as the pack’s Beta, or as her friend.

“I’m okay,” she assures him, and she tries to sound like her usual bubbly, cheerful self, tries to smile and look him right in the eye like she usually would, but it falls flat and miserable, stomped into the ground by their boots as they circle around an errant tree. Wyatt frowns.

“Are you sure?” he asks dubiously. “You’ve been kind of quiet all day.”

She freezes, her feet stuttering to a halt. Her fingers pick incessantly at the fur on her wrist, the bit of rabbit skin she’d crafted into a bracelet one cold winter when she was a pup. Wyatt waits patiently. He’s always patient, especially when he knows he can break her in under two minutes. It’s why she prefers Willa and her hot impatience out of the two; at least with Willa, she can sometimes keep a secret.

“Am I dumb?” she blurts out, not thirty seconds later, and then curses herself for being so quick to fold under pressure.

Wyatt is taken aback. “What?” he says in surprise. “No, you’re not dumb. Why would you think that?”

She looks down, scuffing the toe of her boot in the dirt. “Some of the girls said I wouldn’t be on the cheer team,” she tells him. “And…and I’m bad at maths, and those boys laughed at me yesterday because I brought the wrong books, and then Ward told me Willa’s only friends with me because I agree to everything she says, and-”

“Wynter,” he says and places a hand on her shoulder. All of a sudden, she realises she is babbling. Her mouth shuts with a snap – she wants to press her hands to her head, to wonder out loud why she said so much, so quickly, when she hadn’t meant to say anything at all. She swallows down the urge to do anything at all.

“You’re not stupid,” he tells her, firm, like he is with the pups, patient in a way that Willa would not be, if it was Willa she accidentally told all of her secrets. “You can’t do maths because the elders taught us to hunt and track instead of count and spell. And you’re friends with Willa because she likes you, not…whatever Ward said.”

“But…” She doesn’t know why she argues, why her face screws up in frustration when he’s only trying to make her feel better. “I make so many mistakes, and the others always laugh at me.” She looks around at the trees, the forest – at _home_ – like it might contain the answers to all her problems. Her eyes end up back at Wyatt, none the wiser for the journey. She sighs.

“Maybe I am dumb,” she says dejectedly, trying to accept the notion on face value, and continues walking.

“That’s just who you are, Wynter,” Wyatt insists, falling into step beside her. “You don’t have to be the smartest to be funny, or kind. And you’re just as smart as everyone else in the den. You’re _way_ smarter than most of the humans at school.”

She looks at him from out of the corner of her eye, trying to judge if he is being honest or just trying to make her feel better. She’s no good at reading people, but she thinks he’s speaking earnestly. “You really think that?” she asks just in case.

His face splits into a grin, the same wolfish expression he gives her when she finds him hunched over a fireplace making s’mores with the pups. “Would I lie to you, Wynter?” he asks, and she can’t help the smile that creeps across her face as he says it.

“You _would_ lie to me,” she argues, but it’s in jest. “You lie to me all the _time_.”

“Yeah, but not about _this_.” As he says it, a howl sounds from somewhere in the woods, a sharp sound of pain from a pup, a summons to the nearest responsible wolf. Wyatt’s head turns towards it, already pinpointing the location, the distance he has to cover. “I’ll see you back at the den?” he asks, and doesn’t wait for her to say yes before he disappears into the woods.

Slowly, her hands fall back to her sides, and then find her pockets, her shoulders slumping forwards as she begins the walk home again alone.


	3. we've come too far

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> prompt: addison + zed + fire

It’s the bonfire that gets him.

It’s a great, blazing thing, built in the middle of some guy from school’s backyard, a pile of old garbage and tree cuttings set alight to warm them against the cold night air. He can feel the heat of it even from where he sits on the back steps of the house, prickling at his skin, the smoke burning at his lungs as he’s forced to breathe it in and out. The light of it hurts his eyes, burning silhouettes of the humans that stand around it into his retinas so that even when he tries to look away, it’s all that he can see.

He doesn’t understand the appeal of it, their need to gather around a fire and hold their hands out to it. The urge to throw their empty cans into its flaming depths and watch them curl and pop and melt into the wood as it burns. He’d ignore it and go back inside with the other zombies, if he could, but Addison is out here by the fire, and he came here to be with her, and he’s not-

He’s not  _ scared _ of fire.

He’s not.

(He’s lying.)

Eliza says it’s something buried deep inside their genetics or something, a side effect of the mutation that makes them zombies in the first place. Some intrinsic, deep-born fear of flames, an instinct that tells them that fire will kill them without the need for first-hand experience. 

Zed thinks it might be more about how humans used to use it to fend them off, before the wall, before they became what they are today. Or maybe it’s because every now and then, someone comes into Zombietown and sets a building on fire just to watch them scream and run.

Either way, Eliza had laughed at him when he’d told her he was going to a bonfire. “Do you even know what a bonfire is?” she’d asked mockingly. 

“It has ‘fire’ in its name, Eliza,” he’d replied peevishly, and glanced apologetically at Bonzo as he flinched. “I know what it is.”

“Then why are you  _ going _ ?” she’s said, like he was stupid.

“I’m not scared of fire,” he’d claimed, bold as the day is long (and he’s  _ not _ scared, he’s just… _ cautious _ ). “There’s other zombies going too. It’ll be fine.”

“Well,  _ I’m _ not going anywhere near a bonfire.”

“You’re not invited anyway,” and then they’d descended into an argument about whether or not an invite to this part was an indication of social status, and if Zed was invited because of football or because of Addison.

_ Addison _ . 

He has his eyes on her, over on the other side of the yard, warming her hands by the roaring blaze. She’s found a group of other cheerleaders to talk to and they’ve been embroiled in a very serious discussion for fifteen or so minutes now (or has it been longer? He hasn’t been keeping track, too busy trying to look casual while he hides back here on the steps). 

She’s beautiful like that, silhouetted between the half-light of the fire and the soft glow that spills from the verandah of the house. It reminds him of how she’d looked in the light garden, the night of their first Zombie Mash, the first time he’d come so close to kissing her…

He’d kiss her now, but she’s over there by that pile of blazing logs, and he’s over here, glued to a set of stairs.

“Why don’t you join the party, bro?” someone asks, and then three members of the football team barrel past him down the stairs like a pack of wild animals. It’s Brock that’s speaking to him, a big lump of a guy that Zed’s kind of come to like, even if he had been anti-zombie when they’d first started playing together. Brock’s cool now – he even appears at Mash every now and then, though he can’t bust a move or hold a note to save his life.

“Some people givin’ you some trouble, Z?” he asks, and jerks a thumb at the small crowd gathered around the bonfire. “Wanna come rough ‘em up?”

“No,” Zed says before Brock can start any fights. “I’m just waiting for someone.”

“Waitin’ for who?” Brock asks, and then one of the other boys, Cody, elbows him in the ribs, so hard they both almost fall over.

“Bro,” Cody says between giggles, his words slurred and his eyes ever so slightly unfocused. A can of something sloshes in his other hand – Zed wonders just how many he’s had before that one. “Bro.  _ Bro _ .”

“ _ What _ ?” Brock snaps, shoving the drunk so hard that he staggers back a couple steps.

“He’s waiting for his  _ girlfriend _ ,” Cody says, pointing at Addison, and then he laughs so hard he drops his drink, the contents bubbling away into the lawn. Brock grabs him in a headlock and they go down together in a pile of drunken limbs, wrestling on the wet grass.

“Want some?” asks Skip, their other companion, and offers Zed a mostly-empty beer bottle.

“I think you need it more than me,” Zed replies with a wry grin, and watches as Skip shrugs and chugs it down.

“Can zombies even drink?” Cody asks from the ground, his head trapped under Brock’s arm.

“Who cares,” says the other boy as he gets up, giving Cody one last shove as he does so. “Why’s the zombie hangin’ out over here when his girlfriend’s over there?”

Their eyes all turn towards Zed. He shifts uncomfortably.

“No reason,” he says, and tries to play it off as cool. “It’s just a bit…hot. Felt like sitting over here.”

The two drunks glance at each other uncertainly, like they’re not sure whether to believe him or not. Brock rolls his eyes and grabs Zed by the shoulder, hauling him up off the steps and onto his feet.

“What are you doing?” Zed squawks as his feet hit the soft turf of the lawn.

“Savin’ your relationship,” Brock replies with a meaty grin and shoves him towards the fire.

Terror does not stab at his gut as he stumbles the two steps forward to keep his balance.

(He’s still lying.)

He looks back at the football players, his clueless, drunk, human friends, and realises with a sinking feeling that they are blocking any chance of escape, all staring at him expectantly. He turns back to the fire and his fate.

_ Relax _ , he tells himself, and then he walks, one step at a time, across the yard ad over to the edge of the fire, just three steps from the flickering flames.  _ It’s not even the bravest thing you’ve ever done, _ he tells himself firmly (lie), and stops his hands from shaking by snaking one around Addison’s waist instead, pulling her close.

“Zed!” she exclaims happily at his sudden appearance, and turns to press a kiss to his cheek. “Where have you been?”

“Here and there,” he says dismissively, like his random disappearance wasn’t totally planned. “You know me, life of the party. Can’t let you keep all the fun to yourself.”

“You’re not going to turn Nicky’s party into a Zombie Mash, are you?” she asks, but she’s laughing, like she wouldn’t  _ really _ mind if he did such a thing.

“I make no promises,” he replies and gives her a grin, trying to pretend that he’s relaxed, that he’s not fixed entirely on the crackling of the flames to his right, the heat that rolls off the blaze and beats at his cold skin, dry and angry and filled with the same smell of smoke that invades every corner of Zombietown all too often.

Addison frowns at him, the corners of her eyes crinkling in concern. “What’s wrong, Zed?” she asks.

“Hm?” he replies, like he wasn’t listening, and then, “Nothing. Nothing’s wrong. I’m fine.”

She shakes her head. “You’re being weird,” she says and he shrugs and turns away, feigning confusion. The fire catches at his eyes, bright and angry, drawing him in. Beside him, Addison’s breath catches in her throat.

“Oh,” she says, and pulls him back a few steps, waving her friends away as they turn to see where she is going. “Is it the fire? I’m sorry, Zed, I didn’t even think-”

“No,” he interrupts, before she can get too far into her apology for something she didn’t do. “I’m not afraid of fire, Ads. That’s just a stupid...zombie...thing.” He feels like a liar, his mouth bitter, his tongue bitten. He ignores the sensation.

She’s silent for several seconds, looking at him with just the faintest hint of a frown on her face. He doesn’t like the expression she wears, the way her eyes dig into his skin, trying to see past the front he’s  _ definitely not _ putting on. He wants to kiss her, or to change the topic, to distract her somehow before she can become properly convinced that he is afraid of a little fire, but he doesn’t. She will only call him out on it, and then he will be in even bigger trouble.

He thinks she might say something about the zombies comment, might press the issue further until he has to argue with her or walk away, but she is not Eliza and she knows him well enough not to push the topic. “Do you want to go inside?” she asks instead, motioning towards the house, where the other zombies hide.

“No,” he insists. “Stay out here with your friends. We always hang out in Zombietown, I want to spend time with your people too.”

She eyes him skeptically. “Are you sure? Zed, I really don’t mind going inside, it’s kind of hot out here anyway-”

“No, come on, I want to go talk about cheer or whatever.” He loops his arm through hers and pulls her back towards the fire, swallowing down the lump that forms in his throat at the sight of the flames, focusing instead on Addison beside him, her hand in his hand, her lips pressed quickly against his cheek as they walk, filled with all the things he won’t let her say; comfort, understanding, acceptance of the things she cannot change.

He stands by the fire and he holds her hand and he pretends it doesn’t bother him when a log cracks and splits down the middle and sparks shower into the air above them, because he’s not afraid.

He’s not.

(He’s lying.)

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> don't forget to leave a comment if you enjoyed reading this! to send prompts or support my writing, visit my tumblr [zombiedadjokes](http://zombiedadjokes.tumblr.com/).


	4. i raised a stone, to end its pain

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> keepswingin asked for some wyaddison angst. 
> 
> this isn't particularly wyaddison, nor angst, but it is kind of dark. great alpha au. um.
> 
> based off the song 'in the woods somewhere' by hozier

_Don’t go into the valley_ , they always say. _Monsters live down in the valley_. And isn’t it funny, he thinks as he climbs down between the skeletons of the trees, their leaves all dried and fallen in preparation for winter, that wolves can have monsters just as they are monsters to the humans.

He shouldn’t be here, lost in the fog on a full moon’s night, walking down and down into the depths of a valley where no wolf goes. Just because the elders are gone, doesn’t mean their warnings should be ignored. But he’s looking for his sister, and even though she would never come down here, he’d heard a noise and he had to be sure-

He rounds a corner, steps between two trees with trunks thicker than his abdomen, and finds a deer crumpled on the ground in the centre of the valley.

It struggles in the midst of a clearing, its leg broken, its blood pooling a brilliant red in the dirt around it, staining its soft pelt with a sticky mess of mud and leaves. He walks up to it, and wonders how this came to be.

It is a wolf’s kill, that much is certain. Claws have ripped at its shoulder, creating deep tears through the muscle and sinew. A rock has been discarded at the edge of the clearing, splattered with blood – the deer’s bone, exposed by the rock, is white and clean in comparison, the end of it smashed into a thousand pieces. The thing still struggles blindly, trying to raise itself onto limbs it doesn’t have.

If it is a wolf (and it is), it is not a wolf from his pack. They do not kill like this, so slow and savage. _Take the life_ , the elders always say, _but take it quickly. There is enough suffering in the world already._

He presses a claw to the vein of its neck, intending to give it the quicker death it deserves, and then pauses, the back of his neck prickling with the sensation that something is watching him.

A shadow falls across him, a flicker of movement at the edge of his vision.

He flinches and falls backwards, scrambling through the leaf litter as the deer kicks its last. The… _thing_ that stands over him is silhouetted by the moon, a dark figure except for a set of flashing teeth and bright yellow eyes. A shiver runs down his spine at the sight of it, at the thought of all the stories of monsters in the valley the elders would tell to them when he was a pup – he wants to get to his feet, to fight or flee, but he is frozen in fear…and then in wonder, as it shifts and circles, and the moon catches on its face instead.

It is not a beast or a ghost or any kind of monster. It is a _wolf_ , a werewolf, just like him; a girl with a head of silver hair, and a face of sunken, sallow lines, all hard edges and twisted muscle, toughened and tempered by the hardships of the valley she haunts. She snarls, claws sharp and teeth bare, and the brightest blue he’s ever seen flashes upon the soft skin of her neck.

“ _Mine_ ,” she hisses, stepping softly end over end, so that he has to turn and turn and turn to keep her from getting behind him. Her eyes flicker between him and the deer, the hot blood that grows cold upon the ground.

“Yours!” he yields and half-rises to move further away from it, not intending any harm.

She is quicker than lightning, swift as the current of the river as she pounces on him. They roll through the dirt, her teeth and claws slashing at his skin, his hands shoving uselessly at her, trying to throw her off. When they come to a rest, she has him pinned to the ground, one hand curled around his throat. Blood flows freely from the deep gouges in his arm and shoulder, the wounds where her teeth and claws have ripped at his skin. There is blood in her mouth; she spits it out to one side, and then turns to him with wild, angry eyes.

“What are you doing-” he begins to ask, confused (who is this wolf? Why is she in this valley, alone? Where has she come from?), but she isn’t listening. Her grip shifts on his neck, and her palm presses against his moonstone – with a yelp, she pulls back like she’s been burnt, cradling her hand and staring at him.

“ _Wolf_?” she whispers, and his own hand comes up to clutch at his moonstone, fearful that she might try to take it.

“Yes,” he tells her, his voice low and soothing. She sits back, her weight settling on his stomach, and stares at him like she’s never seen anything like him before.

“Your power…” she says, and reaches down to tap his fingers, unable to reach the moonstone itself. “You will die.”

He shivers, afraid – not of her, but of the way she whispers the words to him, so sure of herself, reverent like anything she says can be made true. Even the fog is listening, swirling and rising to obscure the moon as she speaks.

“No,” he says, as if to correct her, though even he can’t bring himself to believe the things he says. “My pack are going to find the moonstone. We’re going to live.”

“ _Pack_ ,” she spits and laughs, mocking him. She leans down, close enough that he can feel her warm breath on his cheek, her eyes the only thing he can see. “No pack,” she whispers in his ear. “Only you.”

She kisses him, short and soft and sweeter than he would have imagined she would be. Her lips taste like the forest, like blood and unripened blackberries and the wild mint that grows around the banks of the river, and as they press against his, they tell him a secret no other has ever known.

When she pulls away, smiling down at him with sharp teeth and otherworldly eyes, he blinks up at her and realises he knows where the moonstone is hidden, and how he can get it back.

“ _Wyatt_!” a voice calls from the top of the valley, the place he has come from. The smile disappears from the girl’s face and she growls, rolling off him to rise back to her feet, crouched defensively between him and the still form of the deer.

“ _Wyatt_ ,” she says, like she’s tasting the name, rolling it around on her tongue to see if she likes it. When she’s satisfied, she bares her teeth at him anew and says, “ _Go_.”

He does as he’s told, scrambling to his feet and bolting through the trees, back the way he came. His heart pounds and his legs ache and as he climbs the hill and leaves the valley, not once does he look behind him to see if she is giving chase.

Back in the forest, in the place where wolves should be, he stops to catch his breath and to turn and look back at the swirling mists, and the downward curve of the damp earth. His sister calls his name again, closer than before, just a few steps through the trees now. He swallows his fear, and his wonder. He goes.


	5. it cuts like a knife (to take back your life)

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> prompt: wyaddison + scars

_I have to go_ , he says, his eyes dark and heavy, his shoulders half-turned towards the mountains already, and the words haunt her for days, weeks, months-

Years. Two years.

She thinks she hears them sometimes in the dead of the night, howls echoing in the still and empty air, all the way to Seabrook. She goes to the den occasionally just to be sure she’s imagining the sounds, but it is always empty and cold, and she always walks home alone, the now-familiar trees her only company.

She throws herself into work and cheerleading, and family. She almost goes back to Zed. She tries to forget.

When, lying awake in the dead of night, the window open to catch any kind of cool breeze, she hears a howl echoing louder than she ever has before, she opens her eyes and finds she has never forgotten a moment of her time with him.

She bolts upright, hair flying, eyes searching the world beyond the open window – but of course, all she can see is the stars, and the moon hung full and bright. She sits and watches it uncertainly, until she is almost sure she’d imagined it…and then the howl sounds again, long and mournful and searching, searching, searching. She scrambles from her bed, kicking at her sheets to free her legs, and rushes to the window to look out on-

Her eyes never find the mountains, because they are fixed on the figure slumped under the tree in the garden below.

\---

_Please don’t leave_ , she says, and every day he sees her smiling in his mind as he rips and tears and runs and runs and runs.

He thinks he sees her sometimes in the daylight, a flash of white between the trees, a footstep behind him that is light and balanced on its toes, like hers. Once, he sees eyes that he thinks are hers, staring at him from across a clearing, but the blood splatters and the eyes glaze over and he decides not to see her in the forest anymore, for fear of losing her memory out here in the mountains.

It’s almost easy to forget her once he does it, to leave her behind with the fire and the ocean and the den, with everything he thought he knew. He throws himself into the work, bloody and bitter, and when his sister grins with sharp teeth and wicked eyes, he smiles back, blood dripping from his claws.

When it’s all done, when they run home all red-eyed and exhausted of power, when it’s been so many sleepless days and bloody nights that all that fills his head is the forest and the dangers it could hold, he comes across a particular cave in the valley, filled with the ashes of old fires, and something stirs in his memory.

It is something human, something too convoluted to fight through the strength of the moonstone that buzzes in his mind, too tame to register in the thoughts of an untamed beast But it is there and it happens and he remembers – her smile, and the flicker of the fire as it lights up her face, and eyes that are soft and blue as a clear morning sky, and happy and staring and glassy and dead against the-

He blinks, and he’s sitting in damp grass under the boughs of her old oak tree, the calls of his pack ringing in the warm night’s air.

\---

“Wyatt?” she whispers as she creeps across the grass, and the way she says his name, so soft and questioning, pulls him from his reverie.

“Addison,” he whispers, the name sweet like honey upon his tongue, a taste he has been denied for two long years. Emboldened by the sound of his voice, she closes the gap and sits beside him, a smile creeping across her face, the joy shining from her eyes.

“I was starting to think you’d never come home,” she says, quiet, like she’s embarrassed to admit it. Like he’s thought of her every day and she’s put him out of her mind. _Oh, how the opposite must be true_ , he thinks, and stares at the grass and the way the moonlight shines silver against it.

A breeze whispers through the night, ruffling the leaves of the trees and running its fingers through the short grass of the lawn. The silver reflections dance and sway, blades of light in the darkness, blood soaking into the dirt-

“Are you okay?” she asks, breaking through the ringing in his ears, and for the first time, he turns and looks at her properly. She is older; there is a different kind of wisdom in her eyes, still youthful but with years behind it she’d never had before, a weariness that only comes from living young and alone in the world. He is older too, but weary in a different way, broken down but not yet built back up, his head filled with awful things and the sharp scent of the forest nearby, the indescribable pull of the mountains and the moonstone that he has been slave to for far too long.

She sits there, shining, perfect, radiant, her lips pressed together in concern, her eyes wide and blue and filled with joy even as she worries over him, and the sight of them makes him smile despite the things that echo in the back of his mind. He’s seen her this happy before, of course, many moons ago, but never with these eyes – eyes that are more wolf than human, sharper and keener of sight and meant for spying traps and hunting prey, and yet he still wants to-

He leans closer, a hand curling around her waist, the other tucking back a lock of her hair. His rough thumb brushes the soft skin of her cheek, and he can feel her shiver at the warmth of his skin, at the sharp edge of his claws. “Can I…?” he whispers, but there’s no need for the question; before he can find the rest of the words, her lips steal them from between his, kissing him with all the longing of the years he has left her alone.

It almost feels wrong to kiss her back – she is so soft and tender and cautious even as her hand trails down his chest. He is hungry and desperate in response, his mind filled with all the things he had forgotten about her, itching to learn them all again as he leans closer and kisses deeper, his fingers tangled in her soft hair.

Her hands find the hem of his shirt, threadbare and fraying, and slip under, cold on the warm skin of his back. He’s too busy kissing her to really notice, to remember what happened, caught in the middle of being a wolf and a _person_. Her fingers creep upwards, exploring every inch of his skin, and then they find the-

She runs a hand across the scars on his back, long welts of skin, raised and knitted untidily together at the bottom of his ribcage, and he explodes.

Like he’s been stung, he rips away from her, scrambling back out of her reach. His eyes are wide and his breath comes in shallow gasps – he’s hyperventilating, but he doesn’t notice because his head is full of awful things, of dark and light and screeching voices and the quiet, wet sound of flesh splitting open.

He’s in the forest, he’s climbing the mountains, he’s ghosting through the trees on the trail of something with two legs and a stone that beats against its neck, only when he runs and leaps it is not there and the only thing around him is the long, sharp claws that are carving through his flesh, tapered to a point and hard as steel, deep enough that they scrape against his bones.

He screams but maybe no sound comes out, he fights back, but his attackers are nothing, and then they are shadows, and then they are dead at his feet and his sister is grim but satisfied and he is lost in the wild and doesn’t remember what a home is or where to find it and blood coats his hands staining his skin forever, forever, forever-

“ _Wyatt_ ,” she says somewhere, close by, and a hand he first thinks is Willa’s presses against his knee. “ _Wyatt!_ ” But he’s soaked in blood and he’s not sure how to keep his teeth from flashing at anything that moves, and he’s about to die but he’s the only one that lives, and nothing is safe, nothing is assured. His bone is exposed, his blood runs free, and a knife of pure silver flickers between fingers, reflecting off of yellow eyes…

It fades slowly, the disjointed illusion of battle, the fake memory that never quite becomes the truth. The feeling, perfectly recalled, of split skin and pouring blood and the flash of bone his sister must have seen when she first found him.

He comes back to Addison’s soft voice, to her hand on his shoulder and her eyes shining with worry. The joy is gone from her face, and it kills him that he has done that, that he has been the one to ruin it all.

“Sorry,” he mumbles in between her whispered nothings. She stops short and stares at him with worried eyes, like she doesn’t know if she can trust him or not.

“What was that?” she asks, and she’s being careful to move slowly and speak clearly, like he might shy again if she does anything bold. He takes a breath to calm the jitter of his nerves, the shaking of his hands as he folds them in his lap where they can’t hurt her.

“It’s just a scar,” he tells her, because the other answer, the answer she’s actually looking for, is too long and too painful to recount.

“Can I see?” she says. He doesn’t miss the twist of her lips that means she really wants to ask something else. Instead of answering, he plants his hands on the ground and shifts, turning slowly so that his back is to her.

He sits, shoulders hunched and silent, as she lifts his shirt, just far enough to see the damage, the long slash of claws rendered hard and clear across his back, curving downward from his spine to his hip. Her breath catches in her throat, but she doesn’t try to touch them again – just stares, the material of his shirt bunched in her fist and resting gently against his shoulder. He wonders if she will notice the other ones, the smaller scars, the fading blue and black of bruises that still mottle his skin, or if this one would fix her eye, would make her blind to everything else he has suffered. He wonders what she will _say_ , later, when she notices the marks of a blade crisscrossing through his pack mark, the welts of marked and burnt skin across his arms, the small but significant weal of puckered skin where a bullet has torn through his stomach, forever lodged somewhere beneath his skin, unreachable.

She lets go of his shirt, hiding the scars, and creeps back around to face him again, close enough that she can take his hand and all he can see is her eyes, as endless as the ocean and churning with so many thoughts and emotions that he can’t keep up. “Will you tell me what happened?” she asks – no, _begs_ , her voice no more than a whisper, her fingers cold but comforting, squeezing at his own. He holds on to her like a lifeline, even as he shakes his head and tries to look away, to see anything but the concern in her eyes.

“No,” he says, and it’s the first time today that his voice has not wavered. “Not yet.”

She considers it, face twisting into an expression he cannot read. For a minute, he’s afraid; that she will press him for an explanation, or that she will get up and walk away into that house, that she will scream at him for being gone so long, that she will kick and claw and beat at him until he cries for mercy on the ground (he won’t fight back. He’ll never fight again).

“Okay,” she says eventually, and relaxes, unaware of the way his mind reels, of how he has to stop himself from flinching before he even hears the answer. “One day, maybe.” She looks at him, like she expects him to say something, but all he can do is try to still the shaking of his hands and the spiral of his mind, so sure that he is in danger even when he tells himself he is not.

“I still love you, Wyatt,” she adds when he can’t find anything to say, like she’s trying to reassure him. “I’ve waited every day to tell you that. I don’t know what happened out there or if I can help you, but I’m here, if you want me to be.”

His eyes snap back to her, wide in disbelief. “What?” he says, and lets the words echo in his head a moment, to be sure he’s heard her right. “Of course I want you to be here. I only ever wanted to come home to you.”

She smiles, a slow, small thing that creeps onto her lips and lights up her face better than any moon or sun could ever hope to. She lets go of his hand and throws her arms around him before he can stop her, so fast that he flinches and then relaxes when she does not let him go. They sit there like that for a long time; she wants to comfort him, to give him all the things she can’t find the words to say, and he cannot find the strength to let go, lost in her arms and the inertia of being home, of trying to find his way back to what he was before.

“ _I’m sorry_ ,” she whispers in his ear, like she’s not everything he needs, and a sob rips at his throat, drowning out the sound of his pack howling as they look for him in the woods.


	6. truth or dare

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Addison has to steal Wyatt's moonstone, for a reason you get to come up with. They've been dating for three years.

“Truth or dare?” Wyona squeaks, and stares with wide eyes as Addison’s smile grows.

“Oh no,” she says and scratches at her head, playing it up for the pups and ignoring Wanda’s canny grin from the other side of the circle. “Um…a dare, please.”

Wyona pales, and turns to Wanda with wide, watery eyes. She hasn’t thought of a dare. Addison waits patiently as the older pup leans over to whisper in the little one’s ear.

From between them, Wilander screws up his nose and makes a loud noise in protest at whatever he’s overheard them saying. “ _ No! _ ” he protests, loud enough that Addison can hear him. “That’s  _ lame _ ! It has to be a  _ good _ dare!”

Wanda shushes him and then taps her ear, asking for him to whisper his idea. What follows is a lot of back-and-forth between the three and several giggles from Wanda’s side, half-hidden behind her hand.

“Okay, okay,” she says, just as Addison is starting to get nervous. “Go on, Wyona.”

The little pup shifts nervously in her seat. “I dare you…to steal a moonstone?”

“To steal  _ Wyatt’s _ moonstone,” Wanda corrects with a wolfish grin that only grows wider at the sharp look Addison gives her.

Laughter ripples through the assembled pups and inwardly, Addison sighs as she stands up. “Give me five minutes,” she says, and gives Wanda a look that says  _ this isn’t over _ as she leaves.

Wyatt isn’t hard to find; he’s standing up at the lookout, watching the lights of Seabrook and the dark stretch of the forest with sharp eyes and a small, content smile (and this is what she loves about him, his quiet confidence, his peace where his sister would be worrying about the safety of the forest, or the patrols from the town, or other wolves coming to cause trouble…).

“You look busy,” she comments as she joins him, an arm sliding around his waist.

“Do I?” he replies and turns to grin at her; and it’s so easy to steal his eyes from the view, from whatever it is had enamoured him before her arrival, that her heartbeat quickens just like it did the day she’d first realised he loved her just as she did-

_ No _ . She can hear the pups laughing from the fire, waiting for her to return. Her eyes shift downwards, to the moonstone that glows softly at his neck, half-hidden beneath his shirt. She could just ask him for it - he’d give it to her in a heartbeat, she knows - but then she feels guilty for even thinking of it, for going against the spirit of the game.

“What are  _ you  _ doing up here?” he asks indulgently, almost like he knows she’s up to something, and she can’t help the laugh that bubbles from her lips.

“Do I have to have a reason?” she replies. “I can’t just come up here because I miss you?”

“Not usually,” he teases. She pulls a face, and she could argue with him, but this time she just kisses him instead; distracting him long enough that her fingers can creep around to the back of his neck and tug at the knot of cord that holds his moonstone in place-

“What are you doing?” he mumbles against her lips, and then pulls back just enough to laugh at her when her fingers freeze, caught in the act.

Addison visibly deflates. “I just need to borrow it for a minute,” she tells him, and starts working at the knot again.

“What for?” he asks, a smile tugging at his lips.

She makes a noise of frustration, both at the question and his atrocious knot-tying skills. “For a dare,” she tells him off-handedly, more concerned with what her fingers are doing than the conversation. 

“For a-” he starts, and then stops abruptly as he figures it out. “For that stupid game the pups are playing?”

“Mhm.” She almost has it undone, and then he tilts his head back to laugh at her and she loses her grip on the soft string, and all her progress on the knot. “Hold still,” she scolds him and grabs at it again, feeling the knot with her fingers.

“I told you to be careful teaching them new games,” Wyatt says smugly, even as he reaches behind his head and undoes the knot with one easy tug. She lifts the moonstone off his neck and lets it pool in her hand - the heavy stone, surrounded by its length of soft and corded string.

“Your sister is the only one I shouldn’t have taught,” she replies, and presses one more kiss to his lips, ignoring the way he’s laughing at her even as she does so. “I’ll be back in a minute. Don’t die while I’m gone, Beta.”

“No promises,” he calls after her as she hops down the stairs, and when she looks back at him he winks and then laughs at himself, turning back to the lookout.

She rolls her eyes and closes her fingers around the warmth of his moonstone, catching Wanda’s eyes as she returns to the pups. “Did you get it?” Wilander pipes up next to her, bouncing in his seat.

Addison smiles and lets the stone dangle from her hand, spinning softly in the air as the eyes of the pups grow large. On the other side of the circle, Wanda pats Wyona on the head and gets to her feet, stepping through the pups to join Addison. “You guys keep playing without us,” she tells the pups and takes Addison’s arm, steering her back towards the lookout.

“You  _ cheated _ ,” she says as soon as they are out of earshot of the pups, and smirks at the way Addison looks at her, trying to feign innocence.

“I did  _ not _ ,” Addison claims...and then Wanda raises her eyebrows and she breaks. “Okay,  _ maybe _ he gave it to me. What did you want me to do, steal it from around his neck? How am I supposed to get away with that?”

Wanda shrugs. “Maybe you’re a magician, I don’t know,” she says and then a grin splits her face and she shakes her head. “Nah. I just wanted to see if he’d actually give it to you.”

“Did you think I wouldn’t be able to do it?”

Wanda thinks about it for a moment. “No,” she says eventually and stops at the bottom of the stairs, letting Addison go up alone. “No, literally giving his life away because someone asked nicely is  _ exactly _ the sort of dumb thing my brother would do.”

Addison laughs.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> please remember to leave a comment if you enjoyed this, and visit my tumblr @zombiedadjokes!


	7. oceans

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> zeddison fluff

It’s bad weather to be out in the middle of the night, the wind blustering down the streets and the air hanging hot and heavy with the oncoming storm – but her hand is wrapped tight around his, their fingers intertwined, and he’s never known how to say no to her even if he tries.

She doesn’t tell him where they’re going. It’s like the wind has caught her in thrall, pushing her down and down towards the eastern side of town. She refuses to explain why she’s keeping to the dark backstreets, now that his curfew is banished to the history books, or why she’s wrapped his arm in plastic and wads of tape from her mother’s office drawers, his Z-band glowing an unhappy, fractured green beneath it all. _It’s a surprise_ , she insists, and tugs him onward, like they don’t have the time to spare.

He baulks at the first _No Zombies Allowed_ sign, mounted high and proud above a pale blue fence. It’s even afforded its own spotlight, so that even now, in the middle of the night, he cannot claim to have missed it. “Addison…” he begins as he pulls her to a sharp stop, and points to the sign, the beacon of light in the black.

She barely glances at it. “It’s the middle of the night,” she says, like it’s nothing. “Come on.”

He’s still hesitant, though she manages to coax him one step closer to this line he shouldn’t cross. “Are you _sure_?” he asks.

She laughs, bright and brilliant, the light reflecting like stars in her eyes. “What, you’re scared of breaking the rules now?” she challenges him. “Like Zombie Mash isn’t _totally illegal_.”

“Zombie Mash _is_ legal now, _thank you_ ,” Zed shoots back, but takes another step in her favour anyway. “As of last week, zombies can gather wherever they want, whenever they want.” He stops, and then adds pointedly. “ _Except_ human-only spaces.”

“It’s still just like Mash,” she insists. “And there’s no lights or anything. There’s no way anyone will see us.”

“Mash is _in_ Zombietown. This is like, the furthest you can get from Zombietown…I don’t even know where we are.” He looks around, like he might be able to figure it out; predictably, nothing looks familiar.

“Well, if you _come with me_ , you’ll find out.” Addison tugs on his arm again, harder this time, and grins when he follows her, albeit hesitantly.

“I’m starting to feel like I’ve been a bad influence on you,” he says, even as he follows her down a set of dark stairs, only staying on his feet out of pure luck.

“Careful at the bottom,” is all she says in reply, although he can hear the laughter in her voice. “It’s really-”

He reaches the bottom of the steps as she speaks, and gasps as his feet sink into the soft ground, his boots suddenly sucking him down into the clutches of the earth. It shifts and turns with every move he makes, unlike anything he’s ever walked on before.

Addison laughs. “You should take your shoes off,” she says, and then she follows her own advice, toeing off her runners and stuffing her socks inside them.

He does the same, sitting down to pull his boots off and leaving them on the steps next to hers. The ground is just as deep under his bare feet, but steadier, and warm as it falls over his toes. He walks a few steps, staring down at it in wonder; and then, just at the edge of his hearing range, he hears the dull roar of something massive and wild and stops short again, staring into the darkness.

“Addison,” he whispers, his feet shifting in the sand. “Are we…is this a beach?”

Her face lights up, silhouetted by the glow of Seabrook behind them. “You haven’t even seen the best part yet!” she tells him and reaches for his hand, pulling him out into the darkness. He follows her blindly, his eyes slow to adjust (it is painfully obvious this is not a place for zombies; they can’t see in the dark, they need _light_ , he is _blind_ …but she leads with such confidence, he’d be a fool not to follow).

The sand turns from deep and loose to hard-packed under his feet, and then to damp and soft, clinging to his hot, sticky skin, his heels sinking slowly into the muck.

“Addison, the water-” he begins, unsure where exactly on the beach they are – and then something cold and bubbling rushes past his ankles, glinting like liquid silver in the moonlight.

He yelps, jumping backwards and almost losing his balance in the tug of water that follows, as it turns and rushes back out to sea. Only Addison keeps him on his feet, clinging to his arm even as she laughs at him, the sound as wild as the wind that whips cheerfully around them, creating eddies in the surface of the water.

“Are you okay?” she asks when she is sure he is on his feet again. He doesn’t answer, just heaves a breath and stares at the light that catches on the crests of waves rolling in towards the shore.

“Here comes another one,” Addison warns him, and then the cold shock of the water pushes past him again, splashing almost to his knees. He braces against the back tow this time, only clinging to Addison for moral support.

“Do you want to go deeper?” she asks as the next wave washes in, calmer than the first two.

Zed hesitates – he doesn’t want to disappoint her, or suggest it’s a bad idea, and he doesn’t want to admit to himself that, now that he is here on the edge of it, this raging, limitless ocean he can’t see is the most terrifying thing he has ever encountered. He wants to indulge her, wants to do whatever she suggests. But for possibly the first time in his life, he is afraid of going any further than he has already gone.

Addison must see it in his face, the uncertainty, the rock and the ocean she’s placed him between. “It’s okay,” she says as she steps towards him, close enough that he can feel the heat of her body. “We don’t have to. It’s probably kind of scary, if you’ve never seen it before, right?”

“I can’t swim,” he blurts out, the excuses pouring hard and fast from his mouth before he can stop them. “And my Z-band – if I fall over – and it’s so dark, if there was a little bit more light-”

“Oh!” She looks crestfallen, her lips turning downwards and her brows furrowing in disappointment at herself. “I’m so sorry, Zed, I didn’t even think-”

“No, no.” He squeezes her hand, brushes his fingers through the windswept locks of her hair. “This is _amazing_ , I can’t believe we’re even…I would never have come here if it weren’t for you. _Thank you_.”

He kisses her before she can try to apologise again, sweet and slow and meaningful, even if all he can taste is the brine of the air and the moment is cut short by a wave that crashes against their legs so hard that they both stagger sideways, laughing and clinging to one another to stay upright.

“We have to bring Eliza and Bonzo here,” he says when they are sure they are right. “Maybe some of the others too. It’s not fair that they don’t get to see this.”

“I was thinking the same thing,” she informs him, and pulls him into a stroll along the very edge of the water. “I just wanted it to be just us first, just to enjoy…this.”

Zed grins. “This is perfect,” he tells her, kicking at the water and admiring how the light from Seabrook glitters in the spray of water that rises from the movement. “Though next time we should bring torches. Or glowsticks.”

Her laughter peels into the open air, clear as a bell and bright against the low roar of the ocean he can’t quite see.


	8. thunder

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> wolves + thunder

They can always feel a storm coming.

It makes the pups restless first, the crackle of electricity in the air as the sky grows darker, the heavy stillness that settles over the mountains. The smell of rain on dry ground, carried on winds that will soon whip through the trees and shudder with the thunder as it rolls over the earth.

The wolves love a storm.

There’s a bad one rolling on, the thunder audible even in the distance, the wind already picking up, pulling the heavy clouds faster and faster again. Willa is almost gleeful as she orders them out to the garden, restless and wild and grinning with all of her teeth. 

The pups are useless, under everyone’s feet as they try to shelter the more delicate plants, the strawberries and the freshly planted fruit trees, the herbs that like high, dry places, barely coaxed into growing down here in the valley as it is. Wyatt tries to corral them, but they only become more gleeful in their evasion of him, convinced it is more of a game than anything else.

Willa snaps at him for stirring them up, but her anger is short-lived - the first fork of lightning splits the sky over their heads just as she’s winding up and she forgets about it immediately, laughing wildly at the crack of thunder that follows, so loud it rattles their bones. 

The rain starts next, big, fat drops that fall heavy and fast, soaking them where they stand. The pups scream in delight and dart through the trees, all but rolling in the mud. Wyatt watches his sister, already searching the sky for the next flash of lightning.

“This is going to be a bad one,” he says mildly, thinking of the garden, of the open side of the den that is sometimes prone to flooding.

Willa glances at him, and then back up at the sky. “Enjoy it, spoilsport,” she advises him, petty, but not so harsh as she would usually be. “It’s the last winter storm we’re going to get.”


	9. fire

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> wyaddison + fire

The haze comes first, like a fog descending from the mountains and becoming thicker and thicker. Then comes the heat, a great wave of it that rolls over them like a stone, the air it brings with it so dry that he is parched after just a few breaths of it, the foul taste of it stinging at the back of his tongue. 

“What is it?” Addison asks as he sniffs at the air, frowning at the acrid, ashy smell, the scent of things burning hot and fast caught on a howling wind.

“Fire,” he replies and then, finally, he turns to look at her. 

Her eyes are wide in alarm, her hand running nervously through her hair. “What do we do?” she asks, looking around at the dry trees and the wild undergrowth, the ground that is cracked from a winter without snow and a summer without rain. She’s never seen a forest fire, he’s guessing. He’s only seen small ones, nothing like the smog of smoke that they are slowly becoming encased in, the flames an unknown distance from them.

He reaches out and takes her hand, pretending not to notice the uncertainty that swirls in his gut. “We have to go to the river,” he tells her, the confidence in his voice falsified to give her strength. He pulls her forwards, into a run, ducking and dodging through the trees with the roar and crackle of the fire getting louder and louder behind them.

In the waters of the river, the banks lowered and the current sluggish from the dry season, they crouch by the rocks arm in arm and listen to the flames as they burn everything to the ground, the smoke red and choking, the air full of embers. Addison doesn’t look, scared that if she opens her eyes she’ll only see burnt and broken things. Wyatt hums a song in her ear, something about fire, written half in a language she doesn’t speak.

“Will it ever end?” she whispers when his voice cracks and runs dry, out of notes to sing.

If he replies, she can’t hear it over the roar of the fire.


	10. your chest gets tight

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> zeddison + zed hiding something

Zed’s not sure when  _ I’m fine _ becomes his mantra, when he starts repeating it to himself twenty times a day.

_ I’m fine _ , he tells Addison when she catches him rubbing at his aching head in the morning, and hauls himself over to the shower in the hopes that he can melt the headache away.

_ I’m fine _ , he tells himself when he sees the fruit bowl and his stomach rolls, when he cracks an egg over a hot pan and the crumple and fold of the shell is the most satisfying thing he’s seen in a week.

_ I’m just getting old _ , he laments when he’s kicking the football to his kids at the park and he can barely find the strength in his legs to send it soaring across the field, or to chase after them to get it back.

_ It’s just a cold _ , he reassures himself in the dead of the night, when he wakes up coughing and out of breath and with an insatiable desire for  _ something _ chewing at his empty stomach…and then a warm hand presses itself to his back and a soft voice whispers in his ear to  _ just breathe, it’ll be okay, just breathe in and out. _

“You should go to the hospital,” Addison tells him when his lungs finally allow him to draw a breath in.

“I’m fine,” he insists in response, though his fist curling in the bedsheets would suggest otherwise. “They’ll only say the same thing they did last time, if they even let me in.”

“Zed,” she says, and her fingers wrap around his forearm, just about his Z-band. Her touch sets his arm on fire, but he doesn’t flinch, doesn’t let it show. It’s just a side effect of the old injury from school, when he’d hacked it. It’s normal. It’s  _ fine _ .

“I’m worried about you,” she says, quiet, pleading.

He turns to kiss her, short and sweet, and then lays back down like nothing happened, like he’d woken in the middle of the night for nothing. “It’s fine,” he tells her again, and he waits until she lays down again too before he closes his eyes, pushing any other doubts from his mind.


	11. you will lead

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> prompt: write something about willa

_ I’m the Alpha _ , you will declare, and your voice will ring from the walls of the den unchallenged (the others will nod and yield, and then they will turn away and whisper behind your back about the girl with the white hair, the scent of a prophecy fulfilled drawing them away).

_ I’m the leader _ , you will growl, and your brother will see your teeth and forget all of his plans (but he is right and you will know, and so you will lead them into town in order to keep their trust. They will follow that girl into the depths of the earth, so far it makes your stomach turn, and carry out your prize upon their shoulders).

_ I’m the one to trust _ , you will insist, and it will be Wyatt’s idea, but you will be the one that rips the moonstone from his hands and offer it to the girl with your tongue between your teeth (the walk to the den will be long and lonely; Wynter will carry the stone, and Wyatt will leave you to walk with the girl, the Great Alpha, and you will stalk on ahead, too proud to ever look back).

( _ I lead this pack _ , you will whisper to the river, like a memory you want to wash away, and then you will dip your hands in the cold, cold water and scrub the mark from your cheek until there is nothing left to ever say it was there. When you are done, you will watch the paint drift down the river, and you will wonder if you were ever more than a child playing at being queen at all.)

**Author's Note:**

> thankyou for reading! please leave a comment if you enjoyed one (or all) of these shorts! it really means a lot to me to know you read and enjoyed them :)
> 
> to send me a prompt (or two, or three, or ten), go [here](https://zombiedadjokes.tumblr.com/ask)


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